Meeting the Epicurean challenge: a reply to Christensen

I immediately reject the opening paragraph:

Epicurus was not stupid enough to say that we aren't harmed by being killed and there is no text anywhere close to that effect. We don't suffer pain after we die, but we certainly are deprived of much future pleasure by being killed earlier than we would otherwise die from natural or other causes.

It baffles me why people think that they can ascribe to Epicurus the most absurd propositions.

Or maybe what I should say is that is amazing how shameless people can be in twisting the words of the dead when they are no longer around to defend themselves.

..the account proposed by Hershenov

..Marquis' argument....

..Christenson's criticism....

If this isn't an example of the maze of words that Acadamia leads people toward I don't know what is.

Hiram if you read further into that and get something out of it please post further.

Thanks for posting this so we can keep on top of developments.

Oscar I will be happy to post an article at NewEpicurean.com too. I don't have it set up to allow self-use at this point but if you would send it by email (or just start a new thread) I will be glad to post it.

Oscar:

Other than taking workload off GPs for trivial stuff like a cold or a broken bone, AI is more suitable to replace specialists than GPs. Things like the GPs personal long-term contact with the patient, his ability to draw on wider knowledge and experience and hopefully to think out of the box, the consideration that a symptom which superficially calls for one specialist may be caused by a problem for which another specialist would be the much better choice to channel the patient to, are likely to be much more difficult to encode than what most of a specialist's knowledge and ability consist of. AI solutions will necessarily suffer from "political correctness" and the need to play by the book to avoid lawsuits. A GPs personal advice to a specific old person to take a glass of sparkling wine a day to boost circulation is unlikely to come from an AI solution.